WordPress Under Siege

Hackers and spammers work tirelessly at their craft and they don’t do it for kicks.

WordPress websites are a favorite target of hackers and their intentions are not honorable. There’s big money in the business of hacking – primarily they want to steal from you, bombard you with adware and spam or collect intellectual information. If you have been hacked you are in good company. This month alone JPMorgan Chase, Staples, the White House and my client, Martin Cutler MD, were hacked by cyber criminals. Here are four simple steps that you can take to avoid be victimized.

CHANGE LOGIN/PASSWORD

Typically hackers work like an amateur burglar who walks down a hallway testing doorknobs until they find one that opens. To avoid this type of break-in be sure that you are not using the default ‘admin’ as the username and come up with a strong password.

UPDATE WORDPRESS, PLUG-INS & THEMES

Just as it is important to keep your antivirus software up-to-date on your computer, it is important for business owners to protect their CMS platform by regularly updating plug-ins, themes & Word Press when updates are available.

STOP SPAMMERS PLUGIN
Stop Spammers is an aggressive spam plugin that stops spam registrations, logins and comments using multiple checks. It looks for typical spammer bad behaviors and blocks those. I have disabled comments altogether on many websites because owners cannot deal with the high level of spam. This plugin has terrific reviews and works wonders.

BACKUP

It is important to back up your database regularly – whether you do it manually or install a plugin to do it for you. Backup buddy will back up your entire wordpress blog. Unlike free plugin’s which will only backup your database, backup buddy exports your database with images, files and whatever you have in your blog’s content folder. Don’t wait until it is too late!